Reads of the Week: November 9, 2012

This is no ordinary Friday. Tonight we’re driving two hours to Greensboro to see two old flames from my childhood – Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend. The remains of The Who is on tour doing Quadrophenia, the album that started my love affair with them. And anyone who knew me in high school, college or beyond knows how crazy I was about that band. I expect to be ridiculously excited and emotional for a few hours. Long live rock!

Is one of your employees a social media rock star? Alexandra Samuel writes at the Wall Street Journal about the “newest management headache: the co-branded employee.” These employees show up to work with a public identity (personal brand) and huge following of their own. How do you make it work for both of you? She advises establishing guidelines and expectations. I think it also helps if management is knowledgeable about the digital world so they don’t have unreasonable expectations.

Not another Lance Armstrong story! Yes, but this story by Mathew Ingram at GigaOm is really about “the democratization of content.” He references an excellent David Carr article in the New York Times to discuss an example of “disruption in journalism.” Except for a few bold voices, traditional journalists accepted Armstrong’s victories and joined in the adulation. Even when suspicions were raised, they didn’t push the matter. But bloggers did. “Amateur or citizen journalists using Twitter and little-known cycling blogs as their platform were the ones who were the most responsible for bringing the story to light.” I follow these “citizens” on Twitter and can vouch that they’ve been writing about Armstrong’s deceit for years.

John Hagel wrote about The Paradox of Preparing for Change – maybe Armstrong should read this. “I love paradox. Here’s an example: the best way to prepare for change is to decide what isn’t going to change.”A childhood full of change – moving nearly every year to a new country – taught him how to prepare for change. He says, “Decide what isn’t going to change, especially in three key domains: principles, purpose and people.” His advice works for organizations too, not just little kids following their dad around the world.

Have I already mentioned how much I love ASAE’s redesigned, heck, reborn, Associations Now website? It’s a magazine, a blog, original content, curated content, news — it’s fantastic. Andrew Hannelly at TMG Custom Media – the company behind the new website – shared “the strategic framework guiding the launch.”

In Associations Now, Joe Rominiecki discussed a basic yet rare association practice – sharing what you know about members. Imagine if everyone on staff could benefit and learn from conversations with members. Wouldn’t capturing and sharing that knowledge lead to better practices and programs?

Finally, here are two stories from our correspondents in the future. Neal Ungerleider at Fast Company asks, “Could your company’s IT department or dev team soon be drafted as digital soldiers in an ongoing cyberwar?” I’ve often wondered how the federal government would cope with cyberterrorism or cyberwarfare on their own. If our technical or physical infrastructure is threatened, wouldn’t they want the best minds in the country working on the problem? Wouldn’t we all want that?

And in the scary-because-it’s-too-believable department, imagine terrorists or evil empires hacking DNA to create and deliver personal bioweapons. Andrew Hessel, Marc Goodman and Steven Kotler at The Atlantic start their article with a story that will give you the creeps, and, what’s worse, they show how that scenario isn’t so far-fetched. “We are entering a world where imagination is the only brake on biology, where dedicated individuals can create new life from scratch. Today, when a difficult problem is mentioned, a commonly heard refrain is There’s an app for that. Sooner than you might believe, an app will be replaced by an organism when we think about the solutions to many problems.”

But don’t worry about any of that right now, it’s Friday, cheers!

My college art project, a drawing of Pete — told you I was crazy about them.